Chapter Thirteen: Waking

"He's waking up!"

Danny opened his eyes to see that he wasn't in his own home, but instead he had wakened up in a hospital. He guessed he was at Mount Sinai Hospital, but he didn't know why he was there. He looked around the room to see who the voice belonged to and saw Mac, along with Stella and Flack sitting in chairs beside his hospital bed. Stella was smiling at him, and he figured out that she had been the one to announce that he was awake.

"Sleepy head Messer finally wakes up?" a familiar voice asked.

He turned his gaze to a hospital bed on his left. "Lindsay," he whispered. She was lying on her side, staring at him with a smile on her face. She looked over to Mac and nodded at him. He understood the message and nodded to her, and he left the room with Stella and Flack following. Once he heard the door close, he asked, "How long have I been out?"

"Not long," she replied. "You were admitted to the hospital Monday afternoon and its Tuesday right now…"

Danny sat up and glanced out the window that was in the room. It was nighttime and he realized he had been out for almost a day now. He looked back at Lindsay. "What's the date?"

"Tuesday, June 24th," Lindsay said with a questioning look. "And it is still 2008, if you wanted to know."

The fire had happened only a day ago, and he had been out for a day now. But how could it only be Tuesday? The day before he had just been talking with the CSI team at Hammerback Café, and the date had been Friday, June 27th, 2008. Had that ever happened? Was it all a dream?

Danny didn't want to believe it. Everything had seemed so real, but he remembered the details that separated it from his real life. None of his friends had worked as CSI investigators. They worked different professions. New CSI investigators worked at the crime lab, one investigator who had helped him discover the person who had started the fire and another who hadn't been to trust. And Aiden Burn, who had died in the burning of a car, had been alive, working for the New York Times.

"What happened?" he asked Lindsay, clueless to what had really happened to him after the fire.

"After you went out, Stella and Flack had come back, along with help. You were immediately transported to Mount Sinai, and so was I, once the firefighters had freed me from the fire. And from the fall, you got a minor concussion, if you wanted to know your medical condition. But the doctors say you should be fine."

Danny nodded, though he was still confused about many things. "Any news on how the fire started?" he asked, wondering if Megan had truly been the one who started the fire.

Lindsay was now sitting at the edge of her bed. She shrugged. "Mac already knows the news, so I'm guessing the others know too. He hasn't told me yet, but he promised he will once I was out of the hospital."

He lay back down. "Do you remember?" he asked, wondering if Lindsay would understand what he was referring to.

She looked at him in question for a second, but soon smiled, saying, "Remember what?"

The next chapter will be posted on Saturday! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!